$4.3m beach buy: PM hits a wall and voters hit the roof
For a bloke who claims his raison d’etre is ‘fighting Tories’, Anthony Albanese has sure supplied them with plenty of ammunition.
It is difficult to suggest that Australian voters are in the grip of buyer’s regret over Anthony Albanese when less than a third of them gave their first preference to Labor. In fact, the Prime Minister’s failures may be explained largely by the way he overinterpreted his own victory, coming as it did on the back of the ALP’s worst primary vote performance since before World War II.
Albanese stood triumphant on election night in 2022 promising to “bring leadership to the country”. He said he would “end the climate wars” and create a “renewable energy superpower” and all that guff, before declaring: “Friends, we have made history tonight.”
From that moment Albanese behaved as if he had won in a landslide that demonstrated a dramatic change in the country’s political character. He did not understand the history he had made, delivering Labor’s least electorally emphatic victory, going backwards from Bill Shorten’s poor showing in 2019 but winning more seats and seeing the Liberals lose many more to the teals and others.
It was hubris that saw Albanese misread his win; hubris that saw him triumphantly promise that night to deliver the Indigenous voice, effectively killing it off with partisan taint; and hubris that has characterised many moves since, culminating in his jarring decision to buy a $4.3m beach house in the middle of a housing and cost-of-living crisis.
For a bloke who claims his raison d’etre is “fighting Tories” he has sure supplied them with plenty of ammunition.
Maybe part of the problem is Albanese’s cartoonish characterisation of his political opponents. Perhaps he does not even comprehend that most people who vote for the Liberals and Nationals (or “Tories”), because they believe in enterprise, choice and small government, could never dream of owning a multimillion-dollar holiday home.
More than two years into his term, with all eyes on an election in the first half of next year, it is a critical stage to assess Albanese’s prime ministership. He says he has been underestimated all his life, but the evidence suggests the estimations may have been close to the mark.
The main characteristics of his stewardship are a visceral aversion to bipartisanship (see the voice and last week’s parliamentary split over October 7), a lack of strength on difficult issues, the habit of handballing responsibility to others, an absence of moral clarity and a propensity to appear like a spectator rather than a leading player. The result is a government without a sense of purpose or a plausible plan.
Albanese should have viewed his messy election win as a warning about the precariousness of major party support, the volatility of modern politics and the fragility of the parliamentary mix. He should have realised the herculean task he faced to rebuild Labor’s base, see off the assault from the Greens and win over the mainstream.
Labor lost one seat to the Greens – Kevin Rudd’s Brisbane electorate of Griffith – and surrendered Fowler in Sydney’s west to independent Dai Le. The Coalition lost two seats to the Greens but it may have more prospect of winning them back, while Labor faces a growing threat from the Greens in inner cities.
Too busy relishing the damage done to the Coalition by the teals, Labor has lacked a strategy to combat the Greens.
It is a diabolical dilemma because Labor cannot win government without Greens preferences, yet the Greens are cannibalising Labor’s primary vote and some of its previously safe seats.
At his election launch speech in Perth in May 2022 Albanese said: “Labor has real, lasting plans for cheaper electricity, cheaper childcare, cheaper mortgages, cheaper medicines and Medicare, and better pay.” It is telling that those promises that could be delivered by spending more taxpayer money can claim to have been delivered (cheaper childcare and medicines), but the promises that require government action in the real economy have failed monumentally (cheaper electricity and mortgages, and better pay).
Instead of being cut by $275 a year as promised, household electricity bills have increased by around double that, and interest rates have increased 12 times since Labor was elected. Wages are a slightly more complicated story with some real wages growth starting to appear, driven largely by the public sector, but according to the OECD Australia is one of the worst performing economies with wages still almost 5 per cent lower than pre-pandemic levels in real terms, compared with an OECD average of 3.5 per cent higher.
Albanese and his Treasurer Jim Chalmers have shown scant regard for controlling what they can – such as constraining government spending, boosting productivity, delivering affordable electricity or reducing immigration – and have been more interested in extra government handouts to try to ease the pain (and perhaps win some votes). The Prime Minister deflects responsibility constantly – interest rates are a matter for the “independent” Reserve Bank, electricity prices are the fault of the Ukraine war, and the budget has been in surplus so what more do you want?
When a people-smuggler’s boat turned up at the West Australian mainland, the Prime Minister said he could not comment because he had been in his car and knew nothing. When convicted criminal non-citizens allegedly reoffended, Albanese deferred to state bail laws.
As the nation focused on the law-and-order crisis and social dysfunction in Alice Springs, Albanese spent three times as much time at the Australian Open tennis than he did in the Red Centre. When anti-Israel radicals began a long-term protest at his electorate office, instead of having them removed he shut down the office.
When the cost-of-living crisis really started to bite, Albanese announced a new mandatory code for supermarkets and gave the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission extra funding to keep Woolies and Coles in check. It is the supermarkets and their 3 per cent profit margins that are the problem, apparently, not the skyrocketing electricity prices, high interest rates and sclerotic labour market rules.
Building on the theme, Albanese posted a pathetic social media video complaining about “shrinkflation”, which he called “a trick” supermarkets and food retailers used to sell less product for the same price. It was eerily similar to a social media post on the same theme from US President Joe Biden, coinciding with the Super Bowl early this year.
Albanese is not only looking for political gimmicks to provide social media distractions, he copies them from a lame-duck president. Talk about a prime minister shrinking before our eyes.
It was only last month that I wrote in these pages about Albanese’s shrinkage and how Labor’s worst fate was not minority government but the possibility of losing power altogether. Back in June I had written how Albanese was shedding authority like a sick cat sheds fur – the signs have been all bad for a long time. The trajectory has been constant. There is a lack of substance but he tries to fix the doubt with more superficial stunts, thereby further exposing the lack of substance.
We have a Prime Minister who says Israel should be able to defend itself but who opportunistically joins in the criticism of Israel every time it defends itself. Albanese talks about fears for social cohesion at home but cannot mention the troubling instances of anti-Semitism without adding in the imagined problems of Islamophobia. While there have been no arrests for anti-Semitic hate speech and death chants on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, we have seen Jewish Australians barred from the same Opera House forecourt. Yet we get nothing from the Prime Minister – simply no leadership.
This is a Prime Minister who boasted on the ABC’s 7.30 in February that Labor had not lost a Newspoll since he had been Prime Minister. But last Monday Labor fell behind – Albo lost a Newspoll – and the next day we learned he had bought a $4.3m beach house. His parliamentary colleagues must have been groaning. His indulgence threatens their careers.
Yet this Sunday night Albanese will be appearing on the ABC music quiz show Spicks and Specks. The Prime Minister indulging his popular music hobby with lefty mates in prime time, while his ministers and backbenchers deal with the cost-of-living backlash.
Talk about hubris. As Oasis would sing, it is supersonic.
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